From road salt to ice and snow to potholes in the road, winter weather put your car through the wringer.
Winter can be brutal on your vehicle. Drivers face sub-zero temperatures, snowstorms and poor road conditions, all of which are not conducive for healthy cars and trucks. Mechanics agree that springtime is a great time to perform maintenance on your ride.
Suffolk Glass, your windshield replacement service in Long Island, offers these helpful spring maintenance tips.
Check Your Air Conditioning System
In all likelihood, you haven’t used your air conditioner since last fall. When you turn it on for the first time this spring, let it run for a good 15 or 20 minutes so the system can get rid of the strange smells.
If that doesn’t get things right, you should have your mechanic take a look at it before temperatures hit the 90s.
Check Suspension and Alignment
Driving through packed snow, over ice and through potholes can damage your car’s suspension and throw it out of alignment. There is definitely a problem if your car pulls to the left or to the right or if the steering wheel vibrates when you drive.
Alignment checks are relatively inexpensive and should be done in the spring.
Check and Add Fluids
We get it, nobody wants to pop the hood and check the transmission fluid in the cold and snow. Hopefully, the cold and snow are now behind us. So now is a good time to open the hood and check all of the fluid levels and top off as necessary.
Remove the Salt
The salt they use to melt the ice and snow on the roads can cause serious damage to your car. As such, you should take the time and make the effort to clean it off.
Take your car to a highly-rated car wash to eliminate salt from your car.
Rotate Tires
Again, we get it, nobody is making an appointment to have the tires on their car rotated when time is better spent in the winter under a blanket on the couch streaming Netflix.
Now that things have warmed up and the days are longer, you can accomplish all of those things that you put off this winter. You should start by having your tires rotated.
Inspect the Brakes
Nothing is as important as properly functioning brakes. Have your pads and rotors checked by a qualified professional to ensure there are no issues. Neglecting your brakes could prove to be dangerous. At the very least, a brake inspection could discover a minor problem that is easily and inexpensively fixed.
Replace the Wiper Blades
Your wiper blades got a workout this last winter. Spring is the time of year when you really need to be swapping out old and damaged wiper blades with new ones.
You should also have your windshield inspected. Winter is hard on your windshield and you should have it inspected for damage. It is far better to fix a small crack now rather than have to replace the entire windshield because the crack expanded.
Call Suffolk Glass today.